A Smart Break? College Tenure Interruption and Graduating Student Outcomes

P. Wesley Routon () and Jay Walker ()
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P. Wesley Routon: School of Business Georgia Gwinnett College

Education Finance and Policy, 2015, vol. 10, issue 2, 244-276

Abstract: Using data from a longitudinal survey of college students from over 400 institutions, we examine the impacts of occupational internship programs and voluntary academic leave on returning academic achievement, post-college ambitions, and general facets of the college experience. Previous literature on college internships has focused on labor market effects and the literature on academic leave has emphasized its causes. Much less has been done to analyze effects of these occurrences on collegiate outcomes. College internships are found to have a positive effect on grades, increase desires to work full-time or attend graduate school immediately following graduation, and slightly increase ambitions to have administrative responsibilities and be financially well off. Voluntary academic leave is found to have only negative effects on collegiate outcomes, including study habits and academic achievement upon return. Implied policy implications are that colleges and universities should champion internship programs but discourage college tenure interruption for other reasons. © 2015 Association for Education Finance and Policy

Keywords: longitudinal survey; college students; internship; occupational internship program; voluntary; academic leave; post-college; labor market; study habits; academic achievement; college tenure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I25 I26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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